ITALY - Back in Bologna

Today I returned to Bologna for some sightseeing with four major things planned.

Firstly a trip to the old university buildings in the city centre. The one hour guided tour is better than the tour with audio guide because you go into more rooms. The highlight of the visit is the Anotomical Theatre, this was used for anatomy lectures in the medical school and has a dissection table in the centre. It was almost completely destroyed by a bomb in WW2 but was restored using as much of the original fabric as possible.

The statue of a man holding a nose is of Gaspare Tagliacozzi and early pioneer of reconstructive surgery

Elsewhere in the university you can see that the walls and celings are covered with the shields and coats of arms of the students who came from all over Europe.

Now lets me honest about it with sight number two, from the outside the cathedral is not a looker. It's not up there with Durham or Reims but it holds something very special inside. Rather than being alined east/west like most other curches, this cathedral is north/south and consquently can house a meridian line. There is a hole in the ceiling/roof through which around midday (1pm in summer time) the sun shines forming a circle of light on the floor which, when alined with the meridian line enables you to tell the time.

Now you need a bit of patience with this one .....

There is usually a crowd of people jostling to get the best pic for Instragram of the circle on the line - and to be honest they are a bit irritating - but patience as we know is a virtue. Sods Law states that as soon the circle of light reaches the meridian, a cloud will cover the sun outside and the photo opportunity will be lost. Well that's what happened today haha! The crowds soon then get bored and move on to the next thing for "The Gram" and if you wait a bit longer the cloud will pass and you will get the pic. OK the circle of light will have moved off the meridian a bit, but the pictures are still quite good.

Next it was a climb up the clock tower, simply for the views over the square and over Bologna's red roofs.

Lastly I joined a food tour which took a group of 7 of us around various shops and restaurants trying, bread, balsamic vinegar (not the 25 yr old though!), cold meats, cheese, tortellini, wine but of course DON'T MENTION SPAGHETTI ! The guide will stress that Bolognese Ragu is always served with Tagliatelle - Spaghetti is for cream sauces only.